A few days before the 11th of November, 1930, the town of Lublin is preparing for National Independence Day. Meanwhile the chief editor of a local right-wing newspaper is brutally murdered in his own apartment.
The investigation is run by Zygmunt "Zyga” Maciejewski, a 30 year old policeman, who was left by his wife but hasn’t been abandoned by his self-denial, alcoholic tendencies and soft spot for boxing. The first suspicions are directed toward the chief editors of two other Lublin newspapers. This happens because one of them is a communist agitator and the other is said to deprave young boys. Maciejewski’s work isn’t made easier by his new collaborator, assigned to him by the regional police headquarters, nor by the disobedient subordinates. When, on the day of the holiday, the body of a press censor is found in the morning, the situation gets even more complicated.
The author effortlessly recreates the atmosphere of Lublin of the 1930s, he ably moves along the urban decorations without losing sight of what is most important – the intrigue. “Komisarz Maciejewski. Morderstwo pod cenzurą” ("Police Officer Maciejewski. Murder Under Censorship”) is a full-blooded detective novel, in which the description of an investigation reaches the level presented in Agatha Christie’s best books. Wroński’s book is enriched with the kind of irony that Dashiell Hammet includes in his novels and is styled to be a crime story from the turn of 19th and 20th century – wrote Magdalena Michalska in the newspaper "Dziennik”.
Wroński truly has a cinematographic eye for details, which appear as if on the edges of frames, somewhere in the background, in the depths, in the perspectives of streets. Thanks to these genre observations he captures the atmosphere of places and carefully avoids the trap of creating a lifeless topographical novel – stated Michał Stanek on the website hieronim.wbp.lublin.pl.
Marcin Wroński (born in 1972) – graduate of the Catholic University of Lublin, he debuted in 1992 with the collection "Udo Pani Nocy” ("Mrs Night’s Thigh”). He is the author of the collection of speculative fiction stories "Tfu, pluje Chlu” ("Ooo, Chlu Spits”; 2005). He also wrote the novel “Wąż Marlo” ("The Snake Marlo”; 2006) and the contemporary novel "Officium Secretum. Pies Pański” ("Officium Secretum. The Lord’s Dog”; 2010). In 2007 he published the first crime novel about the police officer Maciejewski, "Morderstwo pod cenzurą” ("Murder under Censorship”). The second book about Maciejewski, "Kino Venus” ("Cinema Venus”) appeared a year later. In 2011 the third novel about this hero, "A na imię jej będzie Aniela” ("And Her Name Will Be Aniela”) was released. In the beginning of 2012 "Skrzydlata trumna” ("The Winged Coffin”) was published.
Source: www.wab.com.pl
Edited by: LS
Нецензурное убийство / Morderstwo pod cenzurą
Translated into Russian by Gajane Muradian and Jelena Barzowa
686 p.
Moscow, Гешарим / Мосты культуры